


Chrysanthemum

by faryn_rose



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 23:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7865113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faryn_rose/pseuds/faryn_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kihyun joins your work in a flower shop</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chrysanthemum

You’ve never minded the sweet scent of dew on silk petals that waft with generosity throughout the spacious store, nor the clumps of earth that crumble so quickly in your grasp that would later give life to blooming colors, nor memorizing the way the sunlight spills through windows to bathe its petaled subjects in the very rich, warm, and beautifully bright nourishment they need.

You do not mind any of these things, nor do you mind the boy that has stumbled into the store, uniform askew, confusion and unsureness clinging to his frame that is granted with someone’s first day on the job. But he seems to bloom like all the other petaled colors teeming around him, fresh and bursting and alive, just as he is right now when asking you, with stuttering words and shifting eyes, how exactly to arrange the plants or water the soil or decide which ones needed partial shade and which needed none at all.

You almost do not answer because the beauty of his face whisks away any words that could form on the tip of your tongue and the shimmer of his eyes does everything to smudge a hue of pink across your cheeks. He does not seem to notice, though, the rambling words of his nervousness is all that preoccupied him. 

“Like, I just started, and I have to water these flowers called christopher-something and I…I don’t know what or where they are and I’m really confused,” he laughs at himself, nervous fingers coming up to rub the back of his neck.

“Chrysanthemum?” Your voice cuts through the air to meet his ears for the first time. His movements freeze at the tune of your words and his widened eyes beckon for you to play it once more.

“W-what?”

You chuckle. “You need to water the chrysanthemum flowers, you mean?"

His eyelashes blink into reality a few times before his face is melting, melting away into a smile that leaves your heart flipping, your stomach bursting so as to allow a new batch of butterflies to take flight.

"Ohh,” he laughed, “that’s what they’re called.”

You fight the urge to linger your irises on his face, to memorize his features that were so beautiful when they were smiling at you, and instead avert them to the color of your shoes that were nowhere as interesting.

“I can show you where they are,” you offer, stilling his frame once again with the sweet hum of your timid voice. He seems to become completely immersed any time a word left your lips and, when the momentary silence has you looking up at him, he is smiling with all the warmth he can possibly brew in your chest once again.

“Yes, please.”

And before you can hastily turn your flushing face away and will your feet to scramble towards the destination already set in your mind, his hand curls around your wrist to stop you and all breaths into your lungs with it.

“My name is Kihyun,” he speaks with earnestness shining in his eyes, and you find yourself rolling the syllables like ocean waves in your mind, memorizing and tracing and plastering it to the handsome face that is staring expectantly back at you.

You manage out your own name with a cough before walking off.

A few minutes later , your laughs are mingling together in the air that is pleasantly thick with vapor, two frames crouched by the flowers in a space tucked away from the stern eyes of your boss. A hand is curled over your mouth as you watch him struggle with a simple watering can.

“You have to turn it the other way.”

“I already spilled some on myself,” he whines and tilts your lips into a smile. You watch as the water splashes out of the sides of the plastic, some of the liquid finally, finally meeting its destination of the colorful plant in graceful streams that have long ago marked his own shirt with wet splotches. His tongue sticks out when he’s concentrated, you notice, and it makes him look impossibly cuter when he smiles at you in victory with crescents as eyes.

“I did it!”

You laugh then, at him and his genuine enthusiasm for such a simple task as watering a plant, and wonder how much more hopeless he could be in the following hours in a flower shop.

“You are like a child,” you find the words slipping from your lips, promising no harm or bitterness.

“You should praise me a lot, then,” he suggested, a bottom lip jutting out in a pout for emphasis. That was enough to draw you forward and boldly ruffle the coffee tufts of his hair in an over display of affection.

“What a good job you’ve done, Kihyunie,” you coo with a laugh dripping from your words, drawing a loud, pleased one from his as well. Soon, your crouching frames give up and your butts are pressed to floors and laughs are coloring the air, water sloshing in cans that made everything but the flowers pots wet.

“Are you two finished?”

The gruff voice grants a chill stream through the warm air under the unimpressed eyes of your employer, a man in his forties who has a flower shop to run and does not have time for two kids goofing off and falling in love on his petaled floors.

“Y-yes sir,” Kihyun manages out with a stony face, but once the presence of the brooding man is gone, both of you are bursting into laughter once again because of how ridiculous the sight must have looked–two seemingly capable florists who laugh with glee with sloshing cans of water.

The notes of your chuckles carry over into the other activities he has been assigned to, like clipping the thorns off of rose stems. He somehow manages to get more thorns of himself than the clipper, and spends a good time bemoaning the pink scars now decorating the delicate skin of his hands. He shuts up when your fingers fondle his, gently placing band aids on each cut with a reassuring smile from your lips. You hope you made his heart stop just as he did with yours.

Making a simple arrangement is the most interesting task to watch, especially the way his features scrunch up in frustration when his organization of varying blossom hues does not look quite right. He asks you for help in silence, with wide eyes, furrowed eyebrows and a distressed pout on his lips that have the word adorable echoing throughout your mind. You end up doing the entire arrangement for him, and he looks at you as if you saved his life.

You become used to one another until the sun sets and the store closes and the plants have been watered and shaded and clipped, with a few more jokes exchanged either way in the bundles of your work. You still feel the touch of his mahogany locks woven through your fingers, and the soft skin of his hand in yours, a ghost of reminders that have you yearning for something more with the clumsy boy who teems with more color than the petaled ones he, more or less, helps grow.

So when you both find yourself bathed in the colors of sunset and the door of the building that holds a universe of flowers clicks shut behind you, you can’t help digging the tip of your shoe into the dirt pebbles at the unspoken words still lingering in the air.

“So, uhh, when will I…or when can I… see you again?” He mumbles awkwardly, quietly, and encourages your head to tilt up.

“Tomorrow?” You bite back a chuckle at the phrasing of his question. “Unless you’re quitting your job here so soon.”

His eyes widen before a sheepish smile spreads across his lips. “Oh yeah…I mean outside of work, like not surrounded by thorny dangers of flowery death,” he shudders and you laugh, wondering why he decided to work here in the first place, but figure that’s a question for a later time.

“There’s a cafe right across the street,” you motion, nodding fondly at the building that has been the site of your breaks and destressors, a place that provides a lovely view of the shop with petals curling and spilling through every inch of its space. “I can go with you this weekend.”

You do not notice the visible pink that has settled on his features an indiscernible while ago, nor the difficulty he has in nodding at your offer, at the prospect of a date with you.

“O-okay. Okay. That sounds good.” He smiles and his dimples nearly stop your heart. You do not move when he begins to trudge his way to his car, the movement awkward in the absence of a goodbye that should have been muttered between you two, but you find yourself piping up.

“Oh, and Kihyun?"

He turns around so fast you wonder if he sprained anything. “Yes?”

A smile curls at your lips. “Don’t forget to water the chrysanthemums tomorrow.”


End file.
